Day number three of our “What’s the next cool thing that could pop up in soccer?” series. Thank you to Jonathan Wilson and his column, “Football’s rare pause for thought gives coaches time for inspiration,” for the inspiration.
Day 2: Unconventional Buildouts!
Day 3: Multiple (Disguised) Defensive Schemes.
Right now, most teams (everyone?) defend the same way over the entire 90 minutes of a game. They set up their 4-4-2 block or their 4-5-1 set or their pressing shape or whatever they choose, and that’s their scheme for the day. Sometimes we see teams bounce back and forth between pressing mode and block mode, but they always stick to the same pressing plan and block shape for the entire game. The only time we see teams switch to a different setup is when they are clearly getting outplayed — it’s a reactive measure.
What if teams started to change schemes through the game in a proactive way?
The first time the team presses, for example, they do so in a 4-3-3 with the center striker dropping to mark the opposing defensive mid and the wingers forcing the ball inside. The second time, they have the striker go straight at the player on the ball and everyone steps forward into man-to-man. The next time… TBD.
Before we keep going, let’s back up this conversation up to cover two basic premises:
Premise 1: In order to beat a well organized, focused defense, you need think ahead or think quickly on the ball.
Premise 2: In order to think ahead or think quickly, you need to access the pictures in your brain and compare what you’re seeing in the moment to the thousands of pictures you’ve taken in previous games. You can’t process a single moment in the full speed of a game, so you need to make educated guesses based on what you’ve seen before. “I’ve been in this situation before; I know what it looks like, and I know what it will look like two seconds in the future; since I’ve seen this before, I know how to solve it.”
If I’m at center back, and you press me, my brain takes a picture of that press. The first time you press me, the picture is grainy and incomplete. Every time you do that same press, my picture gets clearer and I can compare the picture to more previous pictures — I get a little closer to finding the solution that works for me (whether I can execute that solution is another question). As the same picture reoccurs, I’ll start to figure out where to look to find the likely opening, and I’ll have a solution before you can get pressure on me.
Those solutions, too, will only come quicker to players as the game gets more sophisticated and the technology gets better. Yesterday, I outlined that I expect teams to come out of the break with new, creative ideas for buildouts. You’d be crazy if you were a Premier League coach if you haven’t been watching Liverpool film and figuring out how to play against their pressing and counter-pressing schemes, even if that means trying things we’ve never seen before -- God knows what they’ve been using before hasn’t been working. Every time a coach pushes the boundaries (Klopp and his pressing or Simeone and his blocks), others step up and push the next boundary.
On top of that, at some point in-game video analysis is going to come, just like it has in the NFL. Soccer already has it at halftime. How long until a center back goes to watch film on an iPad while his team sets up to take a corner kick? Then how long will a single defensive plan work?
The processing power on a soccer field is only getting better and faster. I would argue, in general, that we don’t think enough about how that processing power works, and how important those pictures in a player’s brain are. A player’s ability on the ball, including the framework within a full team’s attack, depends on his ability to process pictures. If you can consistently push unfamiliar pictures on a player in a game…advantage defense.
Defensive plans should intentionally create new pictures throughout the game. If you give three looks to the opposing team, then that’s three pictures that they need to analyze in the run of the game. They can’t get fully comfortable with any of them. On top of that, even if they do find a solution, they might not use the right solution in the right moment, especially if you disguise it.
Take a look at these three pictures. In the first picture, we see a team getting organized in a standard 4-3-3 defensive shape. In the next two pictures, we see the two different ways they could press out of the same shape.
In the second picture, the solution for the right center back is the clipped ball into the left back. In the third picture, however, that same pass would get picked off by the opposing right winger. Players always want to think and plan ahead on the ball, so how can you limit that, and potentially use it against them?
It doesn’t need to be limited to pressing, either. It’s probably even easier to use in deeper blocks. You can defend in a 4-4-2 for the first sequence, then drop the second striker into the midfield for a 4-5-1. The next time, you could drop the center mid to create a 5-4-1. Now the attacking team needs to find multiple solutions and react in the moment to know what solution to implement in a given sequence. They’ve lost their ability to plan.
Now, if I were reading this, I know what I would be skeptical about — It’s better to be very good at one thing than to be average at multiple things. It’s hard enough to get excellent at one defensive scheme, more less three. If you aren’t excellent at any single thing, you probably aren’t good enough overall.
It’s definitely an important concern, and I don’t have a great response to it. My best response: It’s easier to get “excellent” at a given type of defensive scheme if the attacking players can’t build pictures in their brains. If the defensive team is constantly changing the scheme, and thus the pictures, then the attacking players will always be a step behind, and the execution of the defensive plan isn’t as difficult. Whatever you lose in defensive execution is less than what the attacking team loses in attacking execution from getting fed new pictures constantly.
On top of that, as players get smarter and on-field processing power gets quicker, players will figure out defensive plans quicker, and it will be exceedingly difficult to get “excellent” at any single defensive scheme. Players will figure out solutions regardless of how efficient your defending is. As a result, the only way to defend well in the future will be to constantly change the picture.
There are definitely drawbacks and challenges, but there are certainly advantages, too, if someone could work through the growing pains.
(I suppose I should have given the caveat the beginning of this series that I’m not sure about any of these ideas. If they were obvious, they would have been done already.)
That’s all today. Carry on (inside, please).